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About Our-Venue.com

Who are we?

In late 2015, co-founders Jason Scott and Tiaan Naude were two electronic engineers & software designers who had just recently tied the knot with their partners. It was then that they experienced (first-hand) just how frustrating it was to try and organize the perfect event. Getting quotes from a wide range of different venues was challenging, especially when they had a very specific event in mind. And so, in light of this frustration, they built Our-Venue.com. It just worked for everybody... As a novice event-planner, you can now get faster quotes and quicker response times from venues. No more waiting for email replies - instant gratification at its finest. As a venue, you now get more enquiries and a higher conversion rate. You allow people to interact with your venue 24/7, and you allow your sales team to create quotes much quicker and more accurately.

“Today, Our-Venue.com is one of the world's leading venue enquiry tools, and it's here to help you create the event of your dreams.”, co-founder Tiaan Naude says. “Browse and choose from our collection of your area’s finest venues, design and customize your event and instantly see how your choices affect your budget. With Our-Venue.com – from the convenience of your own home – you are your own event planner.”

Over the course of 8 years, the team has grown and the product has been refined. Going from the first, very basic ‘Version 1’ of the platform, all the way through to the current ‘Version 5’ – Our-Venue.com has been getting more and more powerful, and has been servicing more and more venues & event planners.

“When we launched in September 2016, we had just over 60 users plan their events on our platform that month. We were so happy at the time that people were even just using our platform.”, says co-founder, Jason Scott. “Today, tens of thousands of people are using our apps to plan their events at hundreds of venues across the world.”

At the moment, the team is happy about the direction that Our-Venue.com is heading in. “There are plenty of amazing venue listing directories out there, but none of them are focused around allowing their viewers / users to build their own custom events online and get real-time quotations. They only inform you about the beautiful venues out there - the moment you want to interact with any of them, it still has to be over traditional email or phone-call.”, head account manager Michiel Basson says. “Our focus is on allowing users to actually interact with their preferred venues online, without the need for back-and-forth emails.”

The team is always very focused on improving their product based on feedback from their clients. “Right from the start, after we had experienced how frustrating organizing an event was from our own perspectives, we wanted to see if other people experienced the same problem. It's a philosophy called 'human-centered design'. We all have great ideas that we think will work - but until you've actually sat down with your target audience and asked them all of the hard questions, you'll never really know. So we started this business by sitting down with real bridal couples and real venues and asking them about how they experienced things. And the results definitely mirrored our own experiences and expectations. That's when we knew we had stumbled onto a great idea - it was solving a real problem for real people.”, Jason says.

“If you aren't growing and improving as a business, then you are stagnating.”, lead team member Cole Adams says. “Our team of in-house developers are continuously adding new features and functions to our offering. Whether it's making management and integration easier for the venues, or streamlining the process for the event-planners, we're always hard at work. Our current focus is to integrate with even more of our client venue's digital content - linking up with everything from YouTube videos to 3D walkthroughs.”

Our-Venue.com services venues from all walks of life. At the most basic level, their apps are built for venues that offer customizable events. Whether its weddings, conferences, birthdays, corporate events cocktail parties, kitchen teas, baby showers, team building packages or celebrations, Our-Venue.com supports them all. “We realize that every venue is unique.”, Michiel says. “We emphasize this uniqueness by working with each venue personally to ensure that the app is representative of that particular venue, and the different event-types that they host.”

The team

The Our-Venue.com team members
From left - Michiel Basson, Jason Scott, Monica Hogg, Jerina van der Kooij, Tiaan Naude

Our History

October 2015

Jason and Tiaan start building the first version of Our-Venue.com.

March 2016

‘V1’ is finished and goes live

June 2016

Our-Venue.com gets rated ’Top 20 Most Innovative Products in South Africa’ at the Hack Jozi competition.

August 2016

The first venue signs up with Our-Venue.com.

September 2016

60 people plan their events online with Our-Venue.com.

October 2016

‘V2’ is built and goes live.

2017

More and more venues join Our-Venue.com, and the team grows.

February 2018

‘V3’ is finished and goes live.

April 2018

50 venues are using Our-Venue.com across South Africa.

May 2018

Event-planner facing website engine is created.

Late 2018

The team continues to grow.

February 2019

Our-Venue.com starts integrating with many other services.

March 2019

The first international venue signs up with Our-Venue.com.

August 2019

100 venues are using Our-Venue.com.

March 2020

Our-Venue.com launches into the rest of Africa.

February 2022

Our-Venue.com launches into the Caribbean.

October 2022

Our-Venue.com launches into the United Kingdom.

January 2023

Our-Venue.com has been used by more than 200 venues.